Hard News: What Now?
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Some small business recovery resources and stories
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Carol Stewart, in reply to
Hey thanks, Jackie, and yes I had noted your most excellent online manners.
Note to self: word things unambiguously.
Have a good weekend. -
Aaron Keown is a known wanker, and campaigned for the DHB primarily on `free parking at the hospital'. Quite what this particular policy meant is beyond me. He's also a hard line Act law and order type with a diversion in his past. It would not surprise me if he said that kind of thing.
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On an "up" note, Tracey Barnett manages quite a nice line of "This Yank thinks y'all are awesome" about how Kiwis generally responded to the quake by just getting shit done and helping out all and sundry.
As individuals, as a community, as a nation together, your response to this earthquake has been nothing short of astounding excellence. New Zealand may have experienced its darkest day, but it was followed by its finest moments.
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Keown is definitely a twatcock of the highest order. There's a huge economic component in being able to "help yourself". We've been able to manage due to having relations with a second car we can use for as long as we need and the ability to drop considerable amounts of money at various hardware and camping supply outlets without compromising our ability to feed the kids - that's just not going to be the case for many people in Aranui.
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Having grown up in North Beach (and knowing New Brighton intimately), & being schooled there & at Aranui High School (and a bit at UC) I can unequivocally state that they have been known as 'poor' areas since the 1950s...while not everyone had the hard eternal grind, an awful lot of the inhabitants did - and do.
Note to Sacha: New Brighton was a thriving little burgh - right up until the time other areas in Canterbury opened up for Saturday shopping. It was dead before the earthquakes (despite one of the most excellently sited libraries in the archipelago) and is deader now...
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TVNZ text story about Key's visit to Bexley today - only caught tail end of clip with reporter saying they'd hassled him into adding Aranui to his interary. Clip online later.
Key makes a reasonable case about the scale of re-electrification efforts. However, ignores comparative response in other suburbs and is still trying to make out that USAR and CDEM are somehow the same thing (whereas CD Director in linked clip from this morning acknowledges the obvious - that they've been running two parallel operations).
The operation needs to be put in perspective to the scale of the earthquake, Key said. "The priority absolutely had to be the search and rescue effort."
Also some implications from the commissar that would please Keown (no surprise an Actoid wouldn't recognise privilege if it bit him):
The Earthquake Recovery Minister is concerned that some residents don't understand the full extent of the quake damage. Gerry Brownlee said contractors are working as fast as possible to restore amenities but are having to clear enormous amounts of silt.
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Sacha, in reply to
New Brighton was a thriving little burgh
Mainly retail jobs though, wasn't it? Or was there a concentration of services/manufacturing businesses there too?
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No Sacha - there were quite popular hotels and at least 3 garages, and several little (=owner-operated) manufacturing businesses - I'd have to access my very early files for this stuff but a good start would be looking into the New Brighton BusinessMan's Association and the New Brighton WorkingMan's Club (both of which my father was president of, at the time of his death (1958.) There was - may still be - a really good little New Brighton Museum (you'll find John W. Hulme in there also - and his father W.J. Hulme, erstwhile clerk to the Christchurch City Council.)
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The Earthquake Recovery Minister is concerned that some residents don't understand the full extent of the quake damage. Gerry Brownlee said contractors are working as fast as possible to restore amenities but are having to clear enormous amounts of silt.
yeah, the people breathing the fucking silt in the high winds the last couple of days have a pretty good grasp of how much there is.
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Christchurch is different to many places in that property values and social conditions diminish as you head towards the sea. I've been quite surprised in recent years to be reminded how stark the demarcations can be.
New Brighton was, to be honest, a bit munted before this all happened. It must be a hard place to live right now.
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Islander, in reply to
Not wrong Russell – the whole place took a nose-dive in the 1970s.
Every time I’ve been back to the place I partly grew up in (‘partly’ because Oamaru/Moeraki were the other places)I’ve felt more & more despondent…BUT, there were still good things going on (one of my cousin’s plant-shops, not least.)One of the family now-dead houses is in that border territory between North Beach/New Brighton.
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Christchurch is different to many places in that property values and social conditions diminish as you head towards the sea.
That's really odd. Why, are the beaches shit? The ones I've seen were beautiful, but I didn't search the whole coast. Or is it so cold that the beach just isn't the big draw? Or so small that it doesn't matter, everyone can get there anyway? Or what?
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Sacha, in reply to
Or is it so cold that the beach just isn't the big draw?
possibly onto something there :)
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The clip of the TVNZ Key's visit story is up (stream, 4 mins).
Photo ops first, including some decent-looking impromptu interaction with residents and a visit to a cleanup crew from Federated Farmers (yep) at a school.
Hard questions at about 2m30; Key trots out "in a perfect world" line; reporter Beth Bates lets him have it. Probably not on the Christmas card list any more.
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Islander, in reply to
I think about 10,000 surfies are just headed your way right now with grim expressions Ben W-
the beaches are excellent (and well known to other habituees - like us fishers.)
CHCH is sometime pointed out where the posh places to live were over the railway lines & inland (e.g Fendalton) and the poor places (e.g North New Brighton) were by the sea-
and cold? Or small?-the beautiful widesweeping Pegasus Bay?
Compared to fucking Dunedin? (where I have surfie rellies? Sheeesh.)
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Peter Hyde deserves to feel proud for helping galvanise attention onto the East - even though we're mainly hearing excuses about why it has taken so long.
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Bound to happen sometime - #eqnzpickuplines
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Brian Rudman notes the opportunistic politicking and gives it some perspective.
Pot, Kettle, Brian Rudman.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
Absolutely agree with you Sacha about Peter Hyde, at the same time I would hope that you can understand if some feel the need to air their frustration, that it too could be of benefit to some. Collective consciousness can be a wonderful thing but also individual expression should feel equally allowed surely? Often, actual experience can be reasons behind individuals comments and we can only learn from that eh? Kia kaha my friend
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
By which I mean, as far as I can see the New Zealand Herald’s opposition to regional fuel taxes to fund regional public transport infrastructure (like the CBD rail loop) have been downright Wagnerian. If Rudman supports the Greens’ proposed “progressive levy” to fund the Christchurch reconstruction, then perhaps he can start a grown-up discussion of their ‘polluter pays’ approach to taking public transport and infrastructure seriously.
Instead the Greens get sneered at every time they suggest it might actually be time to stop treating car ownership and cheap petrol as some kind of fundamental human right, while public transport (which isn’t driven by unicorn farts and pixie dust but serious long-term investment) is some tree-cuddling masturbation fantasy. But I guess when it comes to "opportunistic politicking" columnists like Rudman have to be careful not to tell their fans anything they really don't want to hear.
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Sacha, in reply to
hope that you can understand if some feel the need to air their frustration, that it too could be of benefit to some
Eh? Airing frustration is great. Excuses from *politicians* if that needed clarifying.
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Sacha, in reply to
Are you saying Brian Rudman opposed the regional fuel tax? And if so, how does that affect his ability to observe that English and co seem pretty relaxed about $14b of top-skewed tax cuts but making hay about $5b from #eqnz?
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
Nah I was thinking about the huge picture but ne'er mind luv. Cheers xx
and for all those in Christchurch, ( Aunty Judy, Uncle Kevin Suzi etc, Steve Hodgees Mum and Dad included) I hope the aftershocks are Kkapput, the toilets are working, the power is on and things are looking up. Sleep well. -
Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Are you saying Brian Rudman opposed the regional fuel tax?
No because that wouldn't be true and we both know it, so I'm not going to fall into that perjury trap. Thank you. But he's engaging in more than a little "oportunistic politicking" of his own.
I don't know if Rudman bothered reading what Brian Fallow actually wrote yesterday, but it was (typically) a damn sight more careful and nuanced than "borrowing [is] another acceptable option." It's an option. So is going Freddy Kruger on WFF and student loans. Both options, I think it's fair to say, that Fallow find equally glib. Oddly enough, because he actually agrees with Rudman that we don't know what the size or distribution of the reconstruction tab will be.
And his casual conflation of government borrowing with tax-cuts was, at best, careless and at worse fucking deceptive rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Which you really shouldn't do when accusing others of "pushing their own agendas".
And I think it's totally fair to muse on why this year's corporate tax cuts escaped Mr Rudman's anathema, unlike (ironically enough) Fran O'Sullivan's call for every tax cut -- including APN's -- to be on the table. (To be fair she's also a lot more enthusiastic about a reconstruction levy that either Fallow or Rudman. Bet that gave many a Green a funny turn.) Perhaps I should Rudders the benefit of the doubt and assume he neither knows nor cares about such things when he can just cut and paste from press releases, but he should.
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